JIMMY PAGE Stokes Fire For LED ZEPPELIN On 40th Anniversary Of Physical Graffiti On InTheStudio; Audio Interview Available

North American syndicated rock radio show and website InTheStudio: The Stories Behind History’s Greatest Rock Bands goes one on one with Led Zeppelin founder, guitarist, producer and songwriter Jimmy Page on the 40th anniversary of Physical Graffiti.

Led Zeppelin’s sixth release had completed a fundamental change in the popular music and media equation that began with their fourth album back in 1971. With the song “Stairway to Heaven”, Led Zeppelin had proven that the album format had matured to the point that a hit single for Top 40 radio release was no longer a necessity for big album sales. 
 
Before Led Zeppelin the conventional wisdom of A&R types was to focus on one sound or style to be successful. But Zeppelin’s international success resulted in more extensive concert tours taking them to the four corners of the world, which only stoked their creative flame such that epic songs on Physical Graffiti like “Kashmir” became musical bonfires, “Ten Years Gone” glowing embers, and “Custard Pie”, “Trampled Under Foot” and “In My Time of Dying” outright sonic blow torches. 
 
One of the enduring legacies of Physical Graffiti was Led Zeppelin’s uncanny ability to seduce the ears while also pummeling the listener with a sonic slam which knew no peer, often in the same song. Jimmy Page shares with InTheStudio host Redbeard how he made the conscious decision to innovate and not be derivative.
 
“I was really careful not to listen to too much other music… I wasn’t following what everyone else was doing in the same sort of category as us, that’s for sure. I was trying to do things that were really different.”   

Go to this location to check out Part 1 of the audio interview with Page.

In 1975, Led Zeppelin holed up in an English manor called Headley Grange to record its sixth studio album, Physical Graffiti. The double album is considered a monumental rock recording; it reached No.1 on Billboard’s Top Albums chart and was the first album to ever go platinum on advance orders alone.

As part of an effort to reissue all of the band’s albums, Page (also the band’s producer) has remastered the groundbreaking album. Out Tuesday, 40 years to the day since the original release of Physical Graffiti, the deluxe edition will include a disc of previously unreleased tracks.

Page shares his memories of Physical Graffiti with Kristin Musulin of USA Today; an excerpt follows:

An album in full: “If you look at the perspective and time frame of it, the one thing that Led Zeppelin didn’t have to do when we went in to do studio albums was be chasing a single. … That gave us the opportunity to really push ourselves musically, you know?”

All killer, no filler: “We weren’t the only group, nor the first, to be doing a double album, but I really wanted to make sure by the time that this was ready to be delivered to the record company that this was going to be like the mother of all double albums because it wasn’t going to have padding of any description on it.”

To read the article in its entirety, click here.